


How Kaidan Stole Christmas

by BytheSea (ye_old_cactus)



Series: A little pick me up [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Basically Garrus calls Kaidan a bitch, Christmas, Dialogue Heavy, Established Relationship, M/M, Not Beta Read, POV Garrus Vakarian, POV Kaidan Alenko, kudos if you know where my inspiration to write this shitshow came from
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 10:10:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16808572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ye_old_cactus/pseuds/BytheSea
Summary: This was going to be their first Christmas together after the reconciliation and Shepard had been so excited about it that for the first time, he’d left Kaidan alone with decorations, he said goodbye with a sweet kiss and a long hug and left with the promise of coming back to a Winter Wonderland and Kaidan was determined to give him just that, or at least he was willing to do all that for Shepard, until he found the damn answering machine.What was Christmas without a Grinch anyway.





	How Kaidan Stole Christmas

It’d been a few months since Kaidan and Shepard had gotten back together, while between them sometimes stuff got awkward, after years of dating and knowing each other, they had managed to pull through everything and the ring in Kaidan’s hand was proof of it.

This was going to be their first Christmas together after the reconciliation and Shepard had been so excited about it that for the first time, he’d left Kaidan alone with decorations. It wasn’t a bad thing, or a punishment… it was just that Shepard tended to be a handful when it came to holding still and looking through boxes for the decorations, so he’d let Kaidan alone to do it, he said goodbye with a sweet kiss and a long hug and left with the promise of coming back to a Winter Wonderland and Kaidan was determined to give him just that, he deserved it… or at least he was willing to do all that for Shepard, until he found the damn answering machine.

What was Christmas without a Grinch anyway.

* * *

_Are you still moping about Kaidan? Get over him, Shepard… you don’t need him. Wrex and Tali are here, come have a drink with us and forget about that bitch._

“Wow, Kaidan. You’ve truly outdone yourself this year,” Garrus said coming out of his bedroom to see Kaidan standing in front of the Christmas tree with a box at his feet, “Shepard is gonna be so happy.”

Kaidan turned around towards Garrus, the answering machine in his hands.

“You called me a bitch.”

Garrus looked back, he stared at the answering machine, then back at Kaidan and then to the answering machine again.

“I can explain it,” he said but Kaidan was already storming off to the kitchen, “listen… I’m Shepard’s best friend it was my duty to—”

“To call me a bitch?!” Kaidan interrupted him, pouring a glass of whisky for himself, “you’re not just his best friend, you’re my best friend, how could you do this?”

“Tali is your best friend,” Garrus replied, realizing too late that maybe that wasn’t best thing to do as Kaidan downed another glass, “it was a long time ago and Shepard was feeling really bad and honestly it was Wrex's fault, he called you a bitch, too.”

“He calls us all kinds of names and I don’t care, that’s how Wrex is, but you… Garrus? We’ve known each other for as long as Shepard and I, we’ve been living together for years… even now, you haven’t apologized!”

Garrus sighed, “I’m sorry, okay?”

Kaidan didn’t look at him, instead he focused on putting back the bottle on the counter, all the moving around and not eating for long hours had gotten him dizzy and the whisky didn’t help, “you don’t even sound like you’re sorry.”

“Because I’m not,” Garrus muttered back and Kaidan finally turned around, “how could _you_ do that to him? He’s done nothing but love you since the first time he saw you, he saved for months to buy that ring for you and you paid him with running away? _How could you.”_

Kaidan paled, shame making his way up his throat, he'd berated himself for months for what he did, and he certainly didn’t need Garrus telling him what he told himself every morning he looked at himself in the mirror, “that’s between us, I told him my reasons and I apologized, I’ve made peace with him, too, you have no right to mention this right now.”

“Then what about me, Kaidan?” Garrus said, his tone changing to a weird hurt tone, “you think that when you left your only hurt him? You said it yourself, we’ve been friends for years and you left and came back, and you didn’t even apologize to me. You left me, too.”

“Garrus…” Kaidan said, regret replacing the shame. He was right, he even apologized to Tali for leaving but he never mentioned anything to Garrus, he thought _that_ apology was one of those things that don’t need to be said, now he felt even worse.

“I don’t regret shit,” Garrus said suddenly, “you _are_ kind of a bitch,” and then he left.

It was anger what replaced the shame.

* * *

“You don’t think that was a little bit… too much?” Tali asked him as soon as he finished telling her what happened.

“You don’t think I’m right?” he asked Tali.

“Why would I?”

Right…

“All I’m saying is that he was a bitch to Shepard, yknow? He left him just a few months after Shep proposed and then he came back like nothing happened.”

“Have you thought what he felt though?” She asked again at the same time Wrex sat next to her. He looked like a train wreck, today marked a full week he’d been sick and when he put his head on Tali's shoulder, Garrus couldn’t help but to feel uncomfortable, maybe a little jealous.

“No.”

“Kaidan… he,” she said, moving Wrex’s head to a less uncomfortable position on her shoulder, “he’d always had his life all planned out, he wanted to be something, he wanted to do something, he had his plans… how do you think he felt when he realized that he wasn’t the person he dreamed to be for years. That instead of working in what he’d planned, he ended up teaching and taking care of a bunch of kindergarteners. What would you do if you felt that the life, you'd always dreamed of was slipping through your fingers and that you only had a teeny tiny window of space to make it possible before settling for the life you currently have?” she finished.

“But he loves Shepard,” Garrus replies stubbornly, trying to ignore how Wrex was straight up snuggling Tali, “he wouldn’t have said yes to the proposal or stayed with him for so long.”

“Put yourself in his shoes, Garrus. If you still had the chance to do something you’ve ever wanted, and that chance was getting smaller by the day, wouldn’t you take it as soon as possible?”

He didn’t say anything, not for a while and then, “I was the bitch, wasn’t I?”

“Here,” she said, handing him the beer she hadn’t touched, “go and apologize,” Garrus sighed, seeing Tali getting up, taking a very asleep, very sick Wrex with her, “meanwhile, I’ll try to get this loaf to bed and maybe I’ll get him to take something for that cold.”

“I’m not sick,” Wrex muttered sickly.

“Need help?” Garrus offered but Tali just pointed at the beer and the to the roof and dragged Wrex out.

\--

It was gone… everything was gone. The decorations on the doorframes, the Christmas tree next to the couch, the elf cookie jar, the deer decorations, the socks above the chimney, the snow globes on the library… it was all gone. Kaidan had left and he’d taken everything with him.

He tried to call him but Kaidan didn’t answer, he couldn’t remember if Kaidan had kept the old shitty apartment before he got back together with Shepard and Tali wasn’t answering her phone to ask her.

Shepard was going to murder him if he found out why Kaidan had left… not only that but his stupid Winter Wonderland was over.

He was about to have full on mental break down when his phone ringed, “Kaidan?” he asked desperate.

“No, why? Where is he?” Shepard said on the other side.

“Ah, he’s just downstairs, getting something to drink,” he tried and luckily Shepard didn’t push the issue.

“Good, he’s not there then… I had a problem with his gift.”

“What?”

“The gift, it got delivered to a different post office and I have to go get it two towns over—”

“So, you’ll be late?” Garrus asked, he could hear angels singing.

“Yeah… just tell Kaidan that, I don’t know, I had a problem at work I had to take care of immediately.”

“Sure, sure, sure, sure, yes I will, sure sure…” he said a little too eagerly.

“Thanks, Garrus. You’re the best,” Shepard replied blissfully unaware and before he hung up, Garrus decided to ask something else.

“So, hey… what would happen if… if you came back and there were no decorations?”

“I'd die,” Shepard replied instantly and then laughed, Garrus was the one who died a little, “I’m kidding… I really want this Christmas to be perfect… I know I shouldn’t blame myself for what happened with Kaidan, but I feel like it was partly my fault because all these years I just assumed he wanted the same as me and never asked him if that was the case. I really need to make this Christmas perfect because I want to show him, he can trust me to tell me whatever he wants, and I want him to include me when he decides on something, you know… I’m getting sappy, but I really want everything to go perfectly, so, not even a storm could prevent me to get his present and make our Christmas perfect.”

Garrus laughed nervously, “okay, bye,” he said and hung up. Shepard was definitely going to murder him.

* * *

It felt bad, it felt really, really bad to do what he'd done but he just couldn’t help it… Garrus had tested him and he’d taken the bait and now with all the Christmas decorations in his tiny ass place, he didn’t know what to do.

It wasn't like he was mad about Garrus calling him a bitch… well he was but that wasn’t the reason he'd run away with Shepard’s Winter Wonderland, it was mostly because Garrus had been right and he hated himself for acting that way and for not apologizing to him.

But it also felt like there was no reason or excuse from Garrus to call him that… he knew he’d made mistake and he was currently still trying to atone for it, it was the biggest reason why he hadn’t gone back together with Shepard as soon as he came back to their city, because he’d wronged him, because it felt like he didn’t deserve Shepard, because he felt like an outsider.

It was honest to god a moment of weakness what had caused him to apologize to Tali and because she called him out on it, made him see what he'd done, made him face it, but Garrus… he’d acted like everything was okay, like their unspoken friendship made apologizing useless. There were other situations like this one, were they’d hurt each other but they never really apologized, they just knew the other felt bad and, and to be honest, if it weren’t for Shepard, a lot of their arguments would still hurt them, but this was a completely new situation and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do.

“Pizza's here,” someone called from outside, he’d forgotten he ordered pizza. Despite all the cooking he could do, the time he lived alone, the time he didn’t have Shepard, had made him ask for takeout more often than not and while he spent more time with Shepard now, the habit hadn’t stop, though now he did it when he didn't feel so good.

He opened the door just to find Garrus holding his pizza, “I’m not paying you,” he said grabbing the box and not even inviting him in, “what are you doing here?”

“Don’t you think this is a little too much?” Garrus asked, eyeing the apartment. It was so cramped that Kaidan had to stay on one side of the room while Garrus could barely close the door behind him.

The snow globes were on top of his kitchen/counter, the garlands were carefully put on the floor, their socks stacked together on the bed, he had no fucking clue how Kaidan had lived there for as long as he did without going crazy, “okay, listen… I’m sorry,” he tried from the teeth out but Kaidan knew him enough to know he was lying.

“I don’t believe you.”

“See… this is why I said you were a bitch,” it came out before he could stop himself and as he saw Kaidan’s face change into a hurtful beyond words one, he just wished for Shepard to make his murder a painless one.

“You have no idea what happened all the months I was away,” Kaidan said, his voice getting louder with every word, “I know I made a mistake, I know I should’ve never left, I know I’m never gonna be able to fix this and the only person I though would never judge me after Shepard, thinks I’m a bitch. What else do you want, Garrus?”

“I want _you_ to apologize to _me_!”

The lights went off.

“Great,” Kaidan said, reaching for his phone to use the flashlight, “you’ve angered the big man up.”

“G-god?” Garrus asked in disbelief, turning the flashlight of his phone on, too.

“What? No… What the fuck,” Kaidan replied, “I mean my super.”

“Ah.”

Then they stood there in silence amidst the Christmas decorations, it wasn’t like they could sit when every single surface of the place was littered with garlands and unlit lights.

“You can go back to our place,” Garrus said sighing, “I’m spending Christmas with aunt Sidera.”

“You hate her and her creepy religious children,” Kaidan said helpfully, chewing a mouthful of pizza.

“Yeah, but I rather be there than ruin Shepard’s Christmas.”

Silence again… and then Garrus left.

It was the second time in less than 24 hours that every single nerve in Kaidan’s body had been overpowered by the shame.

* * *

“Merry Christmas, John,” Kaidan said as soon as the door opened, and Shepard appeared covered in snow from head to toe. He barely had time to catch himself as Shepard barreled him to the floor.

“I love it,” he laughed kissing Kaidan breathless, “it looks beautiful.”

Kaidan smiled, completely forgetting about Garrus, “you mean it? You barely saw it.”

“Yes!” Shepard replied instantly taking off all the layers of clothes he was wearing.

“Where were you all day, by the way,” Kaidan asked, helping Shepard with buttons and zippers.

“Garrus didn’t tell you?”

“Uhm…”

“Doesn’t matter,” Shepard said at the end, kissing Kaidan again when he only had a shirt and his jeans on, “I’ll show you later… but right now—my dick’s cold and your ass is hot, so…” he actually winked while trying to get Kaidan out of his clothes.

“You’re a real romantic,” he rolled his eyes, trying to get off the floor and to the room.

“No!” Shepard whined, both arms around Kaidan’s midriff to prevent hum from getting up, “I wanna do it in Winter Wonderland.”

“What?”

“Heeeeere,” he pouted and Kaidan couldn’t do anything but stare at him.

“Here? On the floor?” His back already hurt.

“Wouldn't be the first time…”

Kaidan sighed, he knew but, “let’s not… remember the last time.”

“It was the day I proposed,” Shepard said, taking Kaidan's right hand with both of his and kissing the finger were the ring hand been put back, “I was terrified.”

“I remember,” Kaidan smiled, “you dropped the ring under the fridge.”

It had been a travesty to get it out and Kaidan had loved every single second of it, he'd never laughed and cried so much at the same time. It wasn’t like they hadn’t discussed that before and while he knew one of them was going to propose eventually, he hadn’t expected it to happen when it did, and he hadn’t expected Shepard to be so nervous he dropped the ring right as he was trying to put it on Kaidan's finger, his hands shaking almost uncontrollably.

It was amazing how even after so many years or knowing each other, they could get the other so nervous like that. They had done it on the kitchen floor twice before Garrus found them. They could sometimes forget he lived there with him… or they lived there with him.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he saw Shepard kiss the pad of the rest of his fingers.

“I think we’re past apologies now.”

“I think there’s always room for more.”

“Only if they’re followed by, _I’m sorry I’m not naked right now._ ”

He smiled, this is why he loved Shepard so much, one minute he could be dumb and funny and the next he could be caring and loving. He loved Shepard so much.

“So, you want to do it here?” he asked, already giving in despite not saying it.

“In Winter Wonderland,” he laughed unbuttoning Kaidan’s pants.

He scoffed shimmying out of his jeans and taking off Shepard’s shirt, “there’s something disturbing about this, you know.”

“Yes, off with the undies.”

“You’re a dork, you know that?” He said, not taking his underwear off.

“You’re gonna make me work for it…” he realized in between Kaidan’s legs, his hands on Kaidan’s thighs.

“When haven’t I?” Kaidan replied cupping Shepard’s face with his hands to bring him closer to him to kiss him.

“When I gave you this,” Shepard said freeing himself from Kaidan’s grasp to grab his hand to lick the ring finger...

Kaidan moaned, he couldn’t help it and he was all the little bit embarrassed about it, not like it deterred Shepard who did it once and twice until Kaidan was too distracted to notice Shepard slipping his underwear further down until they were above his knees.

“That’s not fair,” he said as Shepard moved a bit to get them completely off, his underwear gone just as soon, too.

“How so?” Shep smirked.

“You distracted me.”

“I worked for them, wasn’t that what I was supposed to do?” he kissed Kaidan before he could hear him retort and Kaidan gave in because well… he was but a man.

For a moment they just kissed, and it didn’t take long for sweat to start forming despite the subzero temperature outside, Shepard’s snow-covered clothes had made a little pool of cold water where they were but Kaidan couldn't care less, he had Shepard right where he wanted him, and he was never going to let him go. Even if he’d dreamed with a different life, being with Shepard had made him realize that while some dreams don’t come true the way we want them, new dreams arrive when you less expect them and that maybe giving up on those old dreams wasn’t really giving up when you were just trying to reach them a different way and with the right people—right person next to you.

* * *

“The-there’s something I… I need to confess,” Shepard said suddenly, pulling out slowly to not hurt Kaidan. He could barely talk in between pants.

“Is th—” Kaidan tried, just as breathless, “is this really the b-best moment you could… find to say th-that?”

Shepard laughed, lying on his back now, he laughed because that was a very Shepard thing to do and a very Kaidan thing to reply.

“I wasn’t working today…” he looked at Kaidan.

“I know you had the day off, why would I think you were working?” well, that wasn’t suspicious at all.

“Garrus didn’t tell you?”

“About that…”

Shepard sighed getting off the floor to pick the box he’d dropped next to the door, almost tripping on the puddle of melted snow.

He made a calling motion with his hand and Kaidan followed to the couch.

“I got you something today, that’s why I had to go out and why I came here late,” Shepard said handing Kaidan the present. It was wrapped in a red and white paper with a blue ribbon. Shepard was amazing wrapping presents and this wasn’t the exception, where the content was round and uneven, the paper was folded to perfection, he made the whole thing look like a piece or art and Kaidan felt bad for unwrapping it but as he saw the corner of the content, everything but the present disappeared.

“You got me a Lego set?” he said awed.

“You like it?” Shepard replied accepting the hug and the kiss... kisses.

“I’ve wanted one for ages! Every Christmas I asked my parents for one, but they always said—”

“That you shouldn’t conform with traditional gender roles and then they gave you an Easy-Bake Oven.” Shepard smiled.

“How did you kn—”

“Garrus.”

“Shepard…” he said sadly, remembering everything that happened that day, “there’s something I need to do.”

* * *

Garrus was miserable. So far this could be in the top 10 worst Christmas he’d ever had. His aunt Sidera had made him pray like a hundred times already, his creepy little cousins had been showing him weird shit and talking about the spirits nonstop and he had no idea if Shepard had gotten his stupid Winter Wonderland.

He was ready to run away when the doorbell ringed.

“I’ll get it,” he said bolting to the door before his cousins or his aunt had the time to say something. When he opened the door, Kaidan, Shepard, Tali and Wrex stood in front of him with a six pack of beer.

“Hi,” Kaidan said sadly and despite everything that had happened today, Garrus was ecstatic to see him.

“Who is it?” his aunt Sidera called.

“Carolers,” he screamed back, motioning their friends to start singing. Wrex started, his voice had gotten deeper than usual thanks to his cold and in no time Shepard and Tali followed.

“Garrus,” Kaidan said, “What I did was wrong, I know that, I was thinking only about myself when I left and then when I came back and you’re right, I never apologized to you but because I thought I didn’t need to, and I was wrong again, I’m sorry. Can be we please, _please_ forget this? I’m so sick of apologies.” He offered the beers and Garrus smiled.

“I’m sorry I called you a bitch—”

“What’s a bitch?” One of his cousins asked behind him. He turned around quickly just to find them _all_ there, looking at him expectantly for an answer.

“It’s a bad word, don’t say i—” he tried but his cousins were already running back to the living room, chanting ‘ _bitch, bitch, bitch_ ,’ “fuck.”

Before his aunt Sidera could come to scold him, he grabbed his coat and ran past his friend, Wrex still singing, “run, you bitches,” he told them laughing but as they saw aunt Sidera emerging from the kitchen with a huge spoon in her right hand and hell in her eyes, they barely heard Garrus as they were already running behind him.

Christmas wasn’t over, Kaidan was back, he guessed Shepard had his Winter Wonderland and Tali and Wrex were with him, so what else could he ask for when, right now, he had everything he wanted?


End file.
